I'm not going to apologize for the HALF YEAR hiatus Chelsea and I took from the blog.

Let's stay positive. We're back! For now. Hopefully for longer because we just paid for another years subscription and it would be a real shame to waste all that money. What have I done in the six months since I posted about it being fall and doing fall things? I applied to grad school, ate some things, got into grad school, ate some more things, and then somewhere towards the end of all of that exciting news and consumption I agreed to make a wedding cake for my dear friends Mary and Seth! For 100 people. Am I fool? Maybe. But I have watched every video on cake assembly, baking, icing, and slicing that youtube has to offer and I'm riding on that confidence.

I'm interrupting the week long interruption of the California series to celebrate the second annual moving day pasta post. The moving day pasta is so much more than just pasta, it is the means by which one can procrastinate the inevitable packing or unpacking by using only the cooking utensils that haven't been packed and the ingredients that haven't totally rotted in the back of the filthy refrigerator cheese drawer to make some semblance of a last supper. It's kind of like Chopped (a show on Food Network that I DEFINITELY don't binge watch when I get my paws on cable) except that at the end no one gives me $10,000 and I still have to move all my shit.

Spring is officially here. I know this because I ate two hamburgers and a hot dog and ice cream cake this weekend, and I had a beer before noon and quite possibly spent more time outdoors than in. Perhaps you do all these things during the winter months and a weekend of meat and beer binging is just the same in January as it is in April. But for me, it was revelatory and cleansing (in the way that nitrites and sugar are cleansing), and it marked a turning point in my mood, skin tone and otherwise, although I could have used at least one more snow storm or a few more below zero days. This gentle spring feels terribly undeserved.

On a recent expedition to Charlottesville's Friends of the Library book sale I came across a true nugget of culinary gold, the kind of illustrative cookbook I savor and collect, a fantastic book titled, What We Eat When We Eat Alone.

It is difficult to place this book in any particular genre, which explains why I discovered it hidden indiscretely under a pile of art history books in the loosely defined Art section of the sale. Part journal, part social experiment, part cookbook and illustration, writer, vegetarian chef, and slow food pioneer Deborah Madison explores the art (and science) of dining alone. Accompanied by eccentric food doodles by Madison's husband, painter Patrick McFarlin, and recipes inspired by conversations the author has with both friends and strangers, the book explores the vast range of meals and rituals people partake in while alone. From a dish as crude as sardines on toast to a meal of roast lamb and herbs so elaborate it merits a poem (see below), the art of eating alone is endlessly defined with no "wrong" approach, save perhaps the sad mustard sandwich consumed over the sink.